LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Chap Copyright No. 



Shelf_____f_JLl 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



* * The * * 
First Text Book 
in Comparative 

♦ Religion * 



WILLIAM ASH MORE, D. D. 



AMERICAN 

Baptist Publication 
Society 



The First Text Book 

IN 

Comparative Religion 



WILLIAM ASH MORE, D. D. 




L i 



PHILADELPHIA 
AMERICAN BAPTIST PUBLICATION SOCIETY 
1420 Chestnut Street 



Copyright 1896 by the 
American Baptist Publication Society 



THE FIRST TEXT BOOK 



IN 

COMPARATIVE RELIGION 

I 




F one proposed to give a full description of 
the great river Yang-tse, and should begin 



at Kiukiang, giving details of the lower sec- 
1 tion, and barely touching upon the upper part, 
it would be declared very inadequate. Yet a 
treatment akin to what that would be is char- 
acteristic of much of the treatment in our day 
of the great subject called Comparative Re- 
ligion. 

The value of study along the new branch of 
theological inquiry is doubted by no one. Origi- 
nally Western theologians and Christian mis- 
sionaries were interested in the study by reason 
of its bearing on their own undertaking. In 
order to success it was essential to know the 
nature of the opposing religions that Christianity 
was to deal with, to understand the secret of 
their hold on their votaries, and, furthermore, to 

3 



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measure of! the common ground between them, 
so as to avoid needless collision and to utilize all 
existing auxiliary possibilities. From the first 
inception of missions this has been a character- 
istic of the best workers. Mention could have 
been made of dozens and dozens of volumes that 
have been written to set forth the nature of Hin- 
duism, and Buddhism, and Confucianism. There 
is no lack of means of information on the sub- 
ject. The " Three Religions of China," as they 
are called, are certainly well set forth by most 
able missionaries ; and the missionaries do study 
the books written. They are not ignorant of 
what they are about, as now and then somebody 
intimates they are. 

But of late years a new turn has been given 
to the study of Comparative Religion, and a new 
use is being made of its ascertainments and de- 
ductions. A kinship between Christianity and 
the worship of " other gods " is to be made out, 
which is a wide departure from the original posi- 
tions taken by the early missionaries. It is not 
intended to enter into them here. This might 
bring on discussion more than these pages will 
allow, and more than might be profitable. The 
purpose of this pamphlet is to call attention to 



COMPARATIVE RELIGION 5 

the proper starting point in all reading and in- 
quiry on the whole subject. 

If any one is to give a full description of the 
Yang-tse he must go beyond Kiukiang, and 
beyond Hankow, and beyond Chungking. He 
must begin at the head waters. If we are to 
have a thorough survey of Comparative Religion 
in its relation to the worship of Jehovah we must 
go back to the Old Testament. We must go 
back of those Ten Great Religions enumerated 
by James Freeman Clarke. Confucianism, Hin- 
duism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Islamism, and 
other " isms " are not the starting point. These 
religions are the daughters, most of them, of still 
older religions. It is those older and those 
mother religions that we need to study far more 
thoroughly than is commonly done by present- 
day writers on Comparative Religion, if we are 
to judge by relativities as they appear in their 
books and essays. The Old Testament is the 
oldest book extant on Comparative Religion. 
It is not only the oldest book, but it is an au- 
thoritative book. The religions it treats of were 
ethnic religions in their day. The accounts 
given of them are sufficiently full and specific 
for all our needs. We are enabled to estimate 



6 



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their moral character and value, their relations 
to Jehovah worship and the attitude of Jehovah 
toward them. Precepts and actual occurrences 
and explicit declarations in great fullness are 
there, extending over a period of two thousand 
years of history. 

First of all, in the Old Testament, we have 
the beginning of human worship, the origin of 
religion. We have the worship of Jehovah 
standing out for ages supreme and alone. Then 
we have the advent of other religions, departures 
from the original worship, not approaches to it, 
but departures, separations, substitutions, and 
usurpations. We have the worship of " the Host 
of Heaven," Bel worship or Baal worship, Moloch 
worship, Dagon worship, with the beginnings of 
nature worship, of hero worship, of ancestor 
worship, and of other kinds in addition. In 
connection with the abundant Old Testament 
disclosures on Comparative Religion we have in 
Romans i, in the New Testament, a divine sum- 
mary of the whole world's experience and of 
God's irreversible judgment in the entire case. 

Appended is a table to illustrate the relations 
between the worship of the one true God and 
the worship of "other gods." 



COMPARATIVE RELIGION 



7 



Period of the Worship of the One and the Only. — The Creator 
of the Heavens and the Earth, the Most High God, the Almighty, Jehovah, 
Elohim, El Shaddai. This period reaches from Adam down till some hun- 
dred or more years after the flood. No traces of polytheism or other theism 
of any kind, nor of idolatry. A sacred day is one of its characteristics. 
Worship consisted in " walking with," in gifts, and subsequently in expia- 
tory sacrifices. Ideas and practices originated in those days of" exclusive 
monotheism were certainly handed down to subsequent generations, and 
became a heritage of the different kinds of heathenism which subsequently 
arose, and which had thus a large appropriated stock to start with when 
they departed from God. In the line of development we come successively 
to 



Noah. 



Abraham 
and Faith. 



Moses and 
the Law. 



Christ and 
the Gospel. 



The Rise of Heathenism. — It arose gradually. The older 
forms were lofty. Worship of the " Host of Heaven," deifica- 
tion of attributes, Sun worship, Nature worship, called the 
worship of "Other gods." Overlap of monotheism and the 
subsequent polytheism. Degradation rapid and fearful. 
Order of the down grade (Rom. i : 23). Its opportunity to 
borrow ideas and usages from Jehovah worship, the place of 
which it was fast usurping. Mutual antagonism of Jehovah 
worship and heathenism (Rom. 1). 



Sabeism. 



Old Testa- 
ment Hea- 
thenism. 

Indian Hea- 
thenisms. 

Greek and 
Roman Hea- 
thenisms. 



Miscellaneous 
Heathenisms 
down to the 
present. 



The Rise of Philosophy. — Some knowl- 
edge of the One True God still lingered. Con- 
tending with polytheism. So long as that 
knowledge remained no need for philosophy, 
which is a search for the Whence, the How, 
and the Whither of all things. When at last 
the sun had set and the knowledge was lost, 
then began the search for the Arkee, the 
" beginning of all things." 



Indian Phi- 
losophy takes 
the lead. 

Greek Philos- 
ophy follows. 

Modern Phi- 
losophy 
brings up 
the rear. 



The Rise of Science con- 
sidered as a religious factor 
only. 

Consideration of the last two 
deferred. 



To-day all struggling for mastery, like the four winds on the great sea. 



8 



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The table, as will be seen, represents four stages 
or periods of human history as affecting religion. 
In addition to what appears in the table itself 
some enlargements and elucidations will be in 
order. 

FIRST STAGE. 
The period of the worship of the One, the 
Supreme. Notwithstanding the multitudes that 
must have lived at the time of the flood we have 
no traces as yet of polytheism among them. 
Prior to the fall, the worship of Jehovah was 
manifested in companionship or walking to- 
gether. The voice of God was heard walking 
in the garden ; there were conversations and con- 
ferences, beyond question, as appears from the 
fact that God made the beasts appear before 
Adam, and he gave them names suggested by 
appearance or qualities. A holy day, specially 
holy, was one of the institutions of the hour. 
After the fall, gifts and sacrifices were added to 
agencies of worship. The former were then 
doubtless, as they have been ever since, expres- 
sion of thanksgiving for blessings and an ac- 
knowledgment of God's ownership and provi- 
dence, and also tributes of service. The sacri- 
fices came from God himself. Adam and Eve 



COMPARATIVE RELIGION 9 

made aprons of fig leaves for themselves ; this 
was to be their u covering " ; the idea afterward 
embodied in the Old Testament word for atone- 
ment, which means a " covering." A few verses 
later we are told the L<ord God made them coats 
of skins. Bnt to get those skins life had to be 
taken. The idea of a vicarious covering was in- 
troduced at the very start with the very first pair 
that sinned. Life must be taken, in order that 
the consequences of the fall may be remedied. 
The antagonism between the two forms of right- 
eousness, the human and the divine, thus began 
at the gates of Eden, and has been kept up ever 
since. A distinction between beasts, clean and 
unclean, was also a heritage of that early form of 
pure religion. 

SECOND STAGE. 
Some time after the flood we see the rise of 
paganism. In the old Accadian, the Chaldean, 
the Babylonian, and the Egyptian religions we 
are first made acquainted with sun worship. A 
knowledge of the supreme intelligence was not 
gone by any means, but men liked to behold 
symbols and to have similitudes. The splitting 
up of the monotheistic conception is seen in the 
religion of Egypt and also in the Vedic religions 



10 



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at a later day. The sun rising was called by one 
name, the sun at noon-day by another, and at 
night by another. Practically three gods were 
made out of one. The overlap of pure Jehovah 
worship and idolatrous worship is very conspicu- 
ous in Bible history. The former was fading 
out, and the latter was coming in, and the period 
of overlap was centuries in coming on, and they 
continue unto this day overlapping each other. 
The secret of the rise of heathenism is that men 
did not like to retain God in their knowledge. 
His character for uprightness and exacting holi- 
ness was distasteful to them, so they substituted 
something else to satisfy the ^temands of their 
nature. Hero worship and ancestor worship 
and worship of the dead came in, also the sub- 
stitution of heaven for the personal Being him- 
self who dwells in heaven. This will not seem 
strange to any one who has noticed the fact that 
public men who are not Christians, if they have 
any occasion to refer to God, will* speak of him 
as "heaven," or "providence," or some other 
word that enables them to evade personality. 

With our Old Testament text-book now before 
us, and Comparative Religion being the subject 
in hand, we cannot fail to note as regards Jehovah 



COMPARATIVE RELIGION 



II 



worship and the worship of other gods, the irrec- 
oncilable antagonism that exists between them 
from beginning to end. The worship of other 
gods was not a " feeling after God," or a seeking 
after God. We see nothing of that kind till the 
rise of philosophy. It was a departure from 
God, an alienation from the life of God, a sub- 
stitution of other gods for the true God, an 
ascription to other gods of the glory which be- 
longed exclusively to the One and the Only ; it 
was the changing of the truth of God into a lie 
and a serving of the creature more than the 
Creator, who is blessed forever. 

The literature of the Old Testament bearing 
on the subject is exceedingly full and exceed- 
ingly specific. It ranges itself into two classes : 

i. Passages which show the effect of heathenism 
on the theocracy — From first to last this was 
corrupting ; time and again were the children 
of God led into idolatrous participation, and 
time and again did the judgments of God come 
upon them in consequence. Baal-Peor was only 
a sample. The long period of the judges was 
filled with examples of like enticements. They 
feared the gods of the Amorites at one time, and 
bowed down to the gods of the Moabites at 



12 



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another. Heathen worship, with its sensuous- 
ness and its loose morality and its visible forms, 
had an attraction for the nnsanctified masses of 
the people. All through the Kings too, do we 
find insidious heathenism working its way in, 
first in one way and then in another. The gods 
of the heathen round about, the altars, and the 
rituals, and the temples, and the groves, and the 
festivals, and the outward display, the necro- 
mancy, the witchcraft, the soothsaying and star- 
gazing, all offered a perpetual temptation to a 
corrupt nature. Over and over again did hea- 
thenism nearly prove the ruin of Israel. On ac- 
count of it did the people have their land invaded, 
their dwellings sacked, their temples burned, and 
themselves carried into captivity. Heathenism 
was the bane of Israel and the curse of Israel. 
How could it be otherwise ? The character of 
the gods of the heathen are all well set forth in 
the word of God: Their Moloch, their Baal, 
their Ashtaroth, their Remphan, their Dagon, 
bloody, murderous, revengeful, lustful, and devil- 
ish, are all fully portrayed — gods of wood and 
gods of stone, dumb idols that cannot see, nor 
hear, nor move. To have anything directly or 
indirectly to do with such religions and such 



COMPARATIVE RELIGION 1 3 

gods was dishonoring to God, debasing to the 
character, and perpetually productive of ruin and 
rejection. 

2. Passages which show the attitude of the 
theocratic head toward heathenism. — Antagonism 
could not be more positive, more unyielding, or 
more intense. Jehovah regarded the worship of 
other gods as a usurpation of his place and pre- 
rogative. He demanded that his people should 
cut themselves loose from all connection with it. 
He separated them by rites and ceremonies, cir- 
cumcision among them, intended to make it 
difhcult to associate with idolaters. He de- 
nounced idolatry and all manner of physiolatry 
and symbol worship, all institutions of similitude, 
even for himself. He denounced the institutors 
of idolatry and condemned such to death without 
mercy. Tampering with familiar spirits, dealing 
in witchcraft, making cuttings for the dead, come 
in the same category of things, for which sure 
and swift judgment came down from heaven. 
What else could be expected under a declaredly 
theocratic administration than the utmost detes- 
tation of the worse than beastliness of such things 
as Phallicism, the ferocities of Molochism, and 
the putridity of Ashtarothism. The slaughter 



14 THE FIRST TEXT BOOK IN 

of Baal-Peor, the slaying of the four hundred 
priests of Baal at Carmel, were not mere out- 
breaks of fanaticism on the part of Moses and 
Elijah. They were the outbursts of divine ven- 
geance and the vindication of a broken law of 
holiness, and Moses and Elijah were only officers 
of the Court of Justice. So it is all the way 
through the Old Testament. Anti-idolatrous 
literature, anti-idolatrous denunciation, occupy a 
most prominent place in the whole history of the 
chosen people. So intense was the divine antag- 
onism to these false religions, and so exacting 
were the regulations made to preserve the people 
from their contamination, that they were com- 
manded, when they captured a place, to burn the 
graven images of their gods with fire ; the gold 
and silver which was on these images was not so 
much as to be " desired " ; they were not to take 
it unto themselves, lest they should be snared by 
that which was an abomination to the Lord their 
God. " Neither shalt thou bring an abomination 
into thine house, lest thou be a cursed thing like 
it, but thou shalt utterly detest it, and thou shalt 
utterly abhor it, for it is a cursed thing " (Deut. 
7 : 25, 2,6). There was to be no religious asso- 
ciation, and no fraternization, and no compro- 



COMPARATIVE RELIGION 1 5 



mise, and no alliance of any kind, no recognition 
of any parity of right to exist on the same soil. 
Jehovah was against idols, as idols were against 
Jehovah, and by idols now we mean the system 
of heathenism as a whole ; the two systems were 
subversive of each other in their very natures. 
The one represented the work of God and the 
other the work of devils. The children of Israel 
had once offered sacrifices to devils, but now they 
were told they were to offer sacrifices in a given 
way, at a given place, and in a given manner, 
and they shall "no more offer their sacrifices 
unto devils." 

It did not alter the case that in those primitive 
religions of Canaan there was much that was 
good. There was none of them but what had 
some good. For instance, they had a god of 
grain to whom they gave thanks, and they ac- 
knowledged dependence and gave thanks for 
mercies received, and they confessed to sinful- 
ness and the need of expiation, and they had 
moral precepts and moral requirements, and 
sacred days and devout observances, and in many 
respects were very religious. Beyond question 
they impressed upon their children many civic 
and domestic virtues. We have only to look 



1 6 THE FIRST TEXT BOOK IN 

into the ancient ethical systems of Egypt to see 
plenty of proof of that. Yet the accompaniment 
of these civic, business, social, and domestic vir- 
tues did not take away from them the character 
of false religions. The terrible sacrifices they 
made to Moloch when they made their children 
to pass through the fire, were terrible confessions 
of sin ; the sense of sin was there, and was recog- 
nized just as it is with us. Yet the sacrifices 
they offered were not accepted on that account. 
The saving value of those sacrifices, or rather 
the non-saving value, was indicated with abso- 
lute precision by Moses, when he said, "They 
sacrificed unto devils not to God." Confession 
of sin made to a devil is not counted as a con- 
fession made to God. Nor does the Old Testa- 
ment, or the New either, give indication of any 
system of commutation or transfer by which 
expiations under a system of heathenism are 
accepted as good under the system of Jehovah 
worship. The tickets of different steamship lines 
are sometimes made interchangeable. There is 
nothing of a parallel nature in Bible remissions. 
Nor does it appear that the worship of Jehovah 
has ever borrowed anything from Baalism or 
Dagonism, or nature worship. If evidence to 



COMPARATIVE REUGION 1 7 

the contrary exists, some one who knows of its 
existence wonld do well to point ont its where- 
abouts. It will be noted also that the Old Testa- 
ment writers were not given to the selection of 
softened expressions when describing the ethnic 
faiths of their day. They were spoken of as 
"abominations," as "nlthiness," as "vanities," 
and as devilism. 

One other point of importance is now in order. 
Those primitive ethnic religions were the pre- 
cursors of the modern ethnic religions. They 
were the spiritual progenitors of certain of those 
" Ten Great Religions " so much under consid- 
eration to-day. 

The genealogies have been well kept ; the 
family line can be easily traced ; the family like- 
ness is well preserved. Ancient heathenism is 
the mother of modern heathenism. Certain fea- 
tures of Baal worship, or sun worship, passed 
over into the heathenisms of India and of Greece. 
Astarte worship is succeeded by Aphrodite wor- 
ship, the worship of the ancient lord of the har- 
vest by the later worship of Ceres and of the 
god of grain in modern times. The family rela- 
tions of the gods of Egypt are imitated in the 
family circle of Olympus. Chemosh and Moloch 

B 



1 8 THE FIRST TEXT BOOK IN 

had their successors in India. The Ammonite 
Moloch as the flame god, or Bel as the sun god, 
are continued in the sun worship of the Parsees 
and the sun worship of Japan. The old-time 
hero worship is continued in China as is the 
original Sobe worship of heaven. The necro- 
mancies and the divinations of Phoenicia have 
their counterparts in the ancestor worship and 
Taoist superstitions of China. Cruelties quite as 
Satanic as were those of the valley of Hinnon 
have been kept up as a part of religion in India 
— in widow burnings and hook swingings and 
Juggernaut crushings — until abolished by the 
British government. Sacrificial usages, festival 
rites, mythological notions and general ideas 
about sin and the creation, and modes of deliver- 
ance from evil, current among the heathen in 
Bible times, are current among the heathen still ; 
so that ancient heathenism and modern heathen- 
ism, so far as vertebrate column is concerned, are 
essentially one — one in object, one in spirit, one 
in antagonism to the worship of Jehovah, and 
one in opposition to the exclusive claim of Jeho- 
vah to be the God of the whole earth and entitled 
exclusively to the worship of all the children of 
men. 



COMPARATIVE RELIGION 1 9 

And still another point as the sequel to the 
one just stated. As more recent heathenism is 
a continuation in lineal succession of the most 
ancient heathenism, so there is a continuation of 
the antagonistic attitude of Jehovah toward it 
and of his purpose to destroy it utterly. 

There is no intimation in the New Testament 
that any of the ancient threatenings are revoked. 
There is no evidence that the heathenism of to- 
day is less a usurpation of the divine prerogative 
than it was in the days of Moses ; there is no in- 
dication that the jealousy of God burns less hotly 
against it than it did at Baal-Peor. It is the 
gospel era, and all judgments are simply held in 
abeyance for a time, and that is all. But when 
the gospel does make reference to heathenism, it 
is in terms of the same sweeping condemnation 
that were heard at Sinai. So there is no change 
in God's own estimate of heathenism. The sen- 
tence of death under the law is also the sentence 
under the gospel ; the judgment of God is now, 
as it was then, that "they which commit such 
things are worthy of death." In those days no 
idolater was tolerated in the land ; in New Testa- 
ment affirmations no idolater shall inherit the 
kingdom of God. In the Old Testament the 



20 THE FIRST TEXT BOOK IN 

idolater, or the man or the woman who enticed 
another secretly to go and serve other gods, was 
to be stoned to death ; in the New Testament 
the idolater is to have his part in the lake of fire. 

Nor can any assumption be allowed that 
modern heathen worship is changed in moral 
nature from the ancient kind. The Corinthians 
and the Kphesians and the Colossians were 
worthy and cultured peoples. They recognized 
a Jupiter whom some would have us consider as 
a sort of Jehovah by implication. In one place 
the people were ready to sacrifice to Paul and his 
companion, saying, " The gods have come down 
to us in the likeness of men." Several half- 
truths might have been educed from what they 
said, and yet their system was a lie and their 
sacrifices were a travesty and an abomination. 
Concerning them all Paul makes the all-inclus- 
ive declaration, a counterpart of the one made 
by Moses, "the things which the Gentiles sacri- 
fice they sacrifice to devils and not to God." 

Nor does it appear that New Testament the- 
ology recognizes itself as under any obligation to 
any of the heathen systems for any of its truths, 
or any of its usages, or any of its practical sug- 
gestions — none whatever. It proposes no alii- 



COMPARATIVE HEUGION 21 



ances ; it provides for no partnerships, no com- 
munityship of worship, no blending of creeds, no 
composite theologies or composite religion, no 
interchange of mntnal compliments, no common 
platform of equality, and no combination of re- 
sources to establish u a universal religion." It 
presents the same unbroken, unyielding front that 
the Old Testament does. God is the same one, 
whose name is Jealous, and who will not give 
his glory to another. Christ is the same Lord 
of the Covenant, who will not share his dominion 
with another "lord," as Baal or any of his suc- 
cessors. Whatever may be the supposed " mes- 
sages " of the so-called ethnic religions to him 
and his church, the message of God and of Christ 
to them is one. u And now commandeth he 
all men everywhere to repent " — repent of their 
idolatries and their sorceries, repent to give him 
glory, or else perish in their own corruption. 
To be sure, modern heathenism, like ancient 
heathenism, has good things about it. These 
are sometimes said to be products of heathenism 
when they are in reality remains of the old stock 
of virtues with which they started out. They 
have sadly suffered though in the wear and tear 
of their wanderings from God and are not fit to 



22 COMPARATIVE RKUGION 



be built into the new structure. It is in bad 
grace to ask or to expect it. Old garments and 
new cloth do not go well together. The prodi- 
gal had a fine stock of clothing when he got his 
portion of goods and turned his back on the old 
homestead ; they were badly used up though 
after he got to feeding swine. When he came 
home he had nothing left but a lot of old rags. 
We do not read, however, that they were taken 
into the family wardrobe, nor did any one pro- 
pose to send for a basket of the husks which the 
swine did eat to serve as a condiment to the 
fatted calf. 



